~WALL OF TEXT! BEWARE!~
Runcible spoons can be considered the fancy silver brethren of the Spork. They’re commonly found in line with the other absurd utensils that reside in an extensive set of silverware. They have three or four stubby prongs (depending on the style) on the end of a rounded scoop. They are sometimes used for desserts that call for both spoon and forks.
The Runcible Spoon, however, is something completely different. Though it has the same form as any other runcible spoon, if you were to use it to spear a bit of delicious ice cream cake, your entire species could vanish. Or perhaps a neighboring sun would implode. Or a new Starbucks would go under construction in Ontario.
In fact, the Runcible Spoon is quite unstable. If you interact with it, you can never be sure of what your result might be. Several years ago in an alternate dimension, an important organization of scientists tried to calculate the exact probability of all possible outcomes from the Spoon in order to harness its powers. They were all incidentally turned into pelicans. The Janitor found them in the lab a week later and they were captured by animal control and released into a nearby coastal wetland reserve, where they have settled down quite happily with a generous supply of fish. The Spoon, however, had vanished.
It reappeared later in dimension X on the planet Earth in a small French boutique, and was purchased within a month and given as a wedding gift to a rich young couple in a state called Georgia. The young bride’s exuberant attitude towards polishing silver led to an opposing outcome in a war that had happened twenty years previous as well as the election of a President and twelve pairs of designer sunglasses suddenly bursting into flame.
Otherwise the Spoon lay in a dusty drawer, safe in its disuse. The couple got older, had children, took a trip to Morocco. The husband died at work in a candy factory, drowned in a vat of Nougat, which is commonly said to be the best way to die in the universe. Whether it was caused by the Spoon is debatable. The wife lived on to be very, very ancient, and when she finally died of her own oldness, her grandchildren held an estates sale to finance their own trip to Morocco.
And that was when the Spoon was bought by a woman named Leslie.
Leslie was not much different from the Georgian couple, from a Spoon’s point of view. The key difference seemed to be the little plastic tag on her blouse that cheerily announced “HELLO MY NAME IS Leslie Mills” in shining green letters. What it did not say was that Leslie was nineteen, or that she had voted Democratic in the last election, or that she went to a nearby community college. It did seem to wordlessly point out that she worked at a coffee shop though.
The “Mills” part had been added on with a green marker. Leslie was quite proud of it, because it meant the people ordering coffee would call her “Miss Mills” instead of just Leslie. Customers were always relieved to see the last name on the tag. Even though the two M’s were hard to pronounce, they appreciated the order it created. Most of them were not on first-name terms with their extended family, and to talk to a complete stranger like they are your good friend was not easy for them. “Miss” they understood. With a firm boundary created, they were not so stressed, and they would leave very good tips. Leslie appreciated this, because she was saving up to buy a used Volkswagen. The Spoon wasn’t sure if it did, as it didn’t know much about Volkswagens. What it did know was people were talking over it. And not only ‘over’ as in on the subject, but quite literally ‘over’ which is usually synonymous with ‘above’, except when you’re in an inverted dimension, or else in zero gravity, in which case you don’t really have an up or down so the idea of ‘above’ is just silly.
